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234 CHAPTER 21 Scoop Artist versus Dr. Kissinger “Love to Get That Son-of-a-Bitch” Sy Hersh was at the pinnacle of success at the New York Times. But just as he had worn out his welcome at the City News Bureau, at the Associated Press, and with Eugene McCarthy, by 1979 he was finished at the Times. His abrasive personality, feuds with editor Abe Rosenthal, publisher Sulzberger ’s increasing unease—all led to the inevitable. Rosenthal admitted that by the late 1970s he had reservations about some of Hersh’s work. Approaches applauded five years earlier no longer looked so attractive. “We were all learning how to do things,” he said, defensively. But Hersh’s departure was compelled by a project that was too controversial for the Times: he wanted to take on Henry Kissinger, the man who might have been “the most powerful and celebrated public servant in modern American history.” There was no middle ground on this Harvard professor who rose to secretary of state. He “aroused controversy of a distinctly personal sort—hatred and veneration, animosity and awe,” observed biographer Walter Isaacson.1 He was the darling of the political right, untouched by the seamy Watergate scandal. To the left, he was a soulless Dr. Strangelove , mastermind of bombing and war. James Silberman, editor of Simon & Schuster’s Summit Books, first came to Hersh with the idea in 1977; Hersh declined. ‘‘It wasn’t something I was lying in wait to do,” he said. Then he approached Hersh again in 1979 with a $250,000 advance. “I didn’t want to do the book particularly until someone threw a lot of money at me,” he said.2 One must wonder how true that was; Hersh had been eyeing Kissinger from the day he joined the Times. “I have been a Kissinger watcher for 11 years,” he wrote in a 1983 letter. At the Times he did more than watch Kissinger, but his SCOOP ARTIST VERSUS DR. KISSINGER 235 attempts to implicate him always fell short—Lavelle, Cambodia, Allende. No doubt the reporter known as “Henry’s nemesis” roughed up Kissinger and tarnished his image, but he needed the time a book would give to locate Kissinger’s fingerprints on questionable White House activities. “I am not going to tell you I am writing a friendly book about Kissinger,” he wrote, a warning on which his critics would pounce. His intention was spelled out a decade earlier, when he told colleague Harrison Salisbury: “I’d really love to get that son-of-a-bitch.”3 Hersh asked for a leave of absence; Rosenthal said no. Generally, the Times did not grant book leaves. Roger Kahn, the best-selling author of The Boys of Summer, recalled that Rosenthal once offered him a sports column; Kahn said he wanted to write books. Rosenthal countered, “Roger, we write our books in the morning, before work.” Kahn declined the offer. Editor Seymour Topping said two of his books were written at night, after work was done. Top Rosenthal aide Arthur Gelb said his 1956 Eugene O’Neill biography was written while he worked full-time. “Your loyalty was to The Times only; go ahead and figure out how to work full time and write a major book.” Sometimes, however, book leaves were given. “If the person was invaluable you tended to give the leave,” observed Al Siegal, a retired editor who was expert on Times policies. But as invaluable as Hersh had been, Rosenthal let him go.4 Hersh and Rosenthal made an arrangement, which was unusual, that he could freelance for the paper. Hersh immediately embarked on a ten-day trip to Communist Vietnam, filing seven articles. He found a black market flourishing in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City. The nightclubs and girlie shows were all shuttered, and the people were unhappy. In Hanoi top officials gave him hours of interviews and took pot shots at the Carter administration. But as he wandered the city where he started his Times career in 1972, he found that Western culture had penetrated—blue jeans, rock music, teens holding hands. His critics saw his visit as evidence that the left-leaning Hersh was at it again. “It is with breathless interest that one reads the series of dispatches,” commented Richard Grenier of the conservative American Spectator. “One is astonished to find Hersh . . . sitting at the feet” of Vietnam’s acting foreign minister “without the faintest hint of skepticism.” Hersh, as...

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